How digitization and biddable media changed everything for advertisers

The most major shifts have happened over the last 10-15 years; in those first 15 years of digital advertising, we may have had new formats (video) or new channels (like search engine marketing), but these were mostly new mediums that slotted into an existing and traditional way of ads being bought, served to, and consumed by customers.

But around 15 years ago we hit an inflection point. Things started to change, then that change accelerated. Like a digital stone being thrown into the advertising pool, the ripples spread further and further out. Now, high-velocity flux is the norm.

The biddable media revolution: a potted history

To start with, the digital revolution concerned itself with the planning and buying of digital display, video and social. The pipes of media buying were being torn up as the explosion of programmatic advertising and biddable media bought in automation- and auction-based models.

Despite the monumental change this represented, it only really impacted a couple of channels. Media agencies were scrambling to work out how to manage this change. Consumers never really noticed any difference. Advertisers, although looking to take advantage of this brave new world, observed this change over the shoulder of their media agencies.

But as the ripples moved outward, more parties started to feel the impact. More channels were part of this biddable revolution. TV, out-of-home, and audio were now included. Biddable media came to represent not only a new way of serving ads to customers, but a challenge to the commercial dynamics of the advertising industry. It cast a light over trading deals and rebates and arbitrage in a way never seen before. To control this, advertisers started to change how they operate.

This sudden opacity of value, in combination with the increased importance of first-party data as a decision input, quickly immersed advertisers into the mechanics of the advertising decision-making process more than ever before. The ripples had reached the advertiser.

The digital metamorphosis

One of the driving factors of the increased digitization of advertising was the online shift of media channels. People consumed ‘TV’ via streaming; radio via online players; magazines and newspapers via websites. Your phone was the tool to watch it all.

For consumers, this shift to digital was a natural migration of consumption, so it's natural that advertising would follow. Few people really cared that they now watched TV on their phone rather than the TV, they just wanted to watch Coronation Street, easily. For consumers, digitization was such an obvious answer to the need for convenience. I bet 95% of the population never stopped to think about it.

We’ve only started to see the real impacts of digitized media and advertising over the last few years. The ripples have now fully engulfed advertisers, and consumers are noticing too.

Advertisers have responded by moving the advertising planning and buying process in-house, taking something that has been outsourced for decades off their media agencies. This has resulted in more than just a headcount increase; it's fundamentally changing the way marketing teams operate. It's forcing the historically separate teams of marketing, IT, and analytics to work as one to navigate a world where pretty much every channel (bar press) has a significant digital element. Meanwhile, legislation has meant that understanding how to communicate with customers (and getting the permission to do so), has to sit with the advertiser.

The media consumer, hitherto largely oblivious to the machinations of advertising business that operate just beneath the surface the ads they see, is now increasingly aware of what's going on. Cookie banners everywhere cannot be ignored. Nor can the need to submit your email address as a prerequisite to even think about buying something online (and then getting an email every day for the rest of time). Likewise ads roadblocking your lunchtime scan of the news listing out every shoe you looked at yesterday. Not to mention the curious feeling that only yesterday you were talking to your friend about taking a weekend away to Paris, and now holiday ads for Paris are appearing on your socials. The ripple has washed over consumers.

That’s how we ended up looking down the barrel (in my native UK at least) of 80% of all ad spend being digital, media agencies needing to change fast or become irrelevant, and a slew of court cases that may significantly change the media landscape we all operate in. Did digitization cause a media convergence? That’s way too simplistic. Digitization caused metamorphosis: that’s more like it.